Defiant Acts: Four Plays by Diana Raznovich/Actos desafiantes: cuatro obras de Diana Raznovich by Diana Taylor , Nora Glickman (review)

Abstract

524 Reviews whereas mid-twentieth century texts engaged ethics much more explicitly to warn that no one escapes writing's violence. 'Abuses' examines how Manuel Gutierrez Najera's 'La hija del aire' (1882) (in Cuentos completos y otras narraciones, ed. by E. K. Mapes (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1958)), Manuel Zeno Gandia's La charca (1894) (Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico: Editorial Edil, 1978), and Teresa de la Parra's Ifigenia (1924) (ed. by Sonia Mattalia (Barcelona: Anaya & Mario Muchnik, 1992)) represent social abuse, abuse of writing, and writing as abuse. Najera and Zeno express concern for the Other?for Najera an abused child in a circus, and forZeno a young, fatherless female character?in competition with their own exploitation of writing for forging identifi? cation with their readers, or for defending progressive causes. But de la Parra turns such misogynistic representations of writing to women's advantage in Ifigenia by deploying a young woman's 'private' writing as a weapon against masculinist discourse and writing. 'Admonitions' reads Jorge Luis Borges's 'The Garden ofthe Forking Paths' (1944) (in Ficciones, ed. by Anthony Kerrigan (New York: Grove Press, 1962)), Alejo Carpentier 's The Harp and the Shadow (1979) (trans. by Thomas Christensen and Carol Christensen (San Francisco: Mercury House, 1990)), and Julio Cortazar's 'Press Clippings' (1981) (in We Love Glenda So Much and Other Tales, trans. by Gregory Rabassa (New York: Knopf, 1983)). While Borges accepts the inherent dangers of writing (whether it be the subtle violence of Tsui Pen's endlessly forking novel or his descendant Yu Tsun's bold acts of murder and confession), Carpentier's parodic novel wonders if one can write about the New World (or 'discover' it, as did Columbus ) without doing violence to it or being damned by it. Finally, Cortazar's story about Argentines in the 1970s associates writers and readers with real torturers by exploring how fiction fulfilsviolent fantasy. These engaging and often original essays complement each other nicely to ask how ethically minded authors can continue to write. Nevertheless, while Gonzalez does briefly acknowledge his dependence on the ethical turn in deconstruction, he skirts several important considerations. For example, from a deconstructivist position, what is the difference between 'writing' and 'language' that allows the act of writing to feel like an abuse of language? Can specific types of writing, however violent, be ethically justified? Can ethics distinguish between real and metaphorical violence, or must we accept the idea of 'killer books' literally? Further engagement with the literary and ethical particulars of deconstruction and the Spanish American socio-cultural con? text would have made Killer Books more compelling. However, Gonzalez fruitfully identifies crucial examples of ethical thought in this strong textual tradition. University of Miami Rebecca E. Biron DefiantActs: Four Plays byDiana Raznovich/Actos desafiantes: cuatro obras de Diana Raznovich. Ed. By Diana Taylor and Victoria Martinez. Trans. By Victoria Martinez in collaboration with Lydia Ramirez and Nora Glickman. Lewisburg : Bucknell University Press. 2002. 342 pp. $43.50. ISBN 0-8387-5479-1. This volume brings together four plays by one ofArgentina' s significant playwrights/ cartoonists, Diana Raznovich. Raznovich has been working in the theatre since the late 1960s, and her work is marked by a subversive sense of humour, and pointed but not didactic social-political critique. Given that she is an important voice in Argentine letters, the plays collected here are a worthy introduction to Raznovich's work for an English-speaking audience. Co-editor Diana Taylor, Professor of Performance Stud? ies at New York University, introduces the collection with an insightful essay entitled MLR, 99.2, 2004 525 'Fighting Fire with Frivolity' that examines each play in the volume carefully,while at the same time providing illuminating background into Raznovich's biography, and the times and circumstances in which these plays were written. Raznovich's career was hindered when repeated threats on her life by the Argentine Armed Forces forced her into exile in 1975, shortly before the military coup that set offthe infamous Dirty War. Exiled in Spain, she returned to Argentina in 1981 to take part in the Open Theatre festival, which brought together fellow blacklisted, censored Argentine artists to produce a cycle ofone-act plays...